Long road to Wynalda's soccer success

By Bill Pinella
| 10:30 a.m.April 15, 2014

This image made May 24, 2010, shows Sky Sports and Fox Sports Networks announcer Andy Gray, center, gesturing as he appears live with National Soccer Hall of Fame member and former U.S. National Team star Eric Wynalda, left, and co-host Nick Webster on Fox Sports Network's Football Fone-In at Nevada Smith's soccer bar in New York. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)
— AP

This image made May 24, 2010, shows Sky Sports and Fox Sports Networks announcer Andy Gray, center, gesturing as he appears live with National Soccer Hall of Fame member and former U.S. National Team star Eric Wynalda, left, and co-host Nick Webster on Fox Sports Network's Football Fone-In at Nevada Smith's soccer bar in New York. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)
/ AP

Eric Boswell Wynalda is 44 now. Approaching 45. And so much has passed his way in soccer.

He’s in the National Soccer Hall of Fame, been there for a decade.

He scored the first-ever goal in Major League Soccer history 18 years ago.

Up until 2008 he was the leading scorer for the U.S. national team.

On three occasions he played on the biggest stage - the World Cup - of the world’s most popular sport - soccer.

And after playing in three and witnessing the last three World Cups in person, he’ll miss this year’s event, which starts in less than two months, due to his obligations as a Fox Sports Soccer Channel analyst and technical director of the Atlanta team in the North American Soccer League.

And where did it all start for him?

“I was at a local McDonald’s having breakfast with my father,” Wynalda said. “I was something like 5½ years old when these 6-year-old kids walked in. They had just played a game and they were so excited. So, my dad took me and my brother to a game. We were just picking daises and fooling around, but afterward my dad told me, ‘That’s the sport I want you to play.’”

But it didn’t start out well for Wynalda when he first put on the green and white uniform of the Little Eagles.

“I was the goalie,” Wynalda explained, “although I wanted to be on the field. I was totally distraught, in tears the whole time. After I finally made a save they put me on the field and I dribbled through the whole team and scored a goal. Still upset and crying, I took off my jersey and threw it at my dad. One of the parents said, ‘Oh, get him a green jersey and put him on the field.’”

It was almost prehistoric times for youth soccer in the U.S.

“No, the parents didn’t make tunnels for us to run through after a game,” he said, “and I don’t even think the lawn chair had been invented yet.”

He laughed.

The Little Eagles led to the Westlake Wolves and a State Cup championship (Wynalda scored 58 goals in 16 games) and then an All-State high school pick at Westlake High where he played with Cobi Jones.

Then came maybe his biggest fork in his soccer road – it was 1987 and UCLA was pointing in one direction, San Diego State in another.

“Both schools recruited me heavily,” Wynalda recalled, “so I watched both of them play. I didn’t like the way UCLA played the game and I loved everything about the way SDSU played. It was kind of like the Yankees against the Bad News Bears. I think my dad (he was a Princeton

grad) was surprised when I told him I was going to San Diego State.

After all that work with me, I just had to tell him, ‘I’m me, not you.’”

It worked. In three seasons on Montezuma Mesa he scored 24 goals and had

25 assists and the Aztecs went all the way to the NCAA finals only to lose to Clemson in his freshman season.

“That year we beat UCLA,” Wynalda recalled.

His World Cup experience is highlighted by two distinct moments.

No. 1 was in Italy in 1990.

“We were playing the Czechs and I just couldn’t control my emotions,” he said. “The last thing I wanted to do was to let my country down. But they were taunting me. They put me against two very physical players and I got the red card because I actually cracked one of their player’s jaws. It looked worse than it was. But I deserved it. Entering that game I wasn’t scared at all. It was all part of the process. It taught me a lesson.”

Moment No. 2 came four years later in front of over 93,000 at Rose Bowl in the summer of 1994. Earnie (CQ) Stewart tapped in a shot for a goal to give the U.S. a 2-0 lead over Columbia in a game they would eventually win 2-1.

“That was the happiest I have ever been on a soccer field,” he said. “It was like having 94,000 in your delivery room when you have a child.

Winning that game proved we could play soccer and handle the pressure.”

He recalled that moment nearly 20 years ago and a continent away as he rode in a bus off to another soccer moment in a career punctuated by success.